Lend a Helping Hand

Imagine a new tester starts working on your team. One of the first things you’ll need to do to help them get ramped up is to have them install Microsoft Test and Lab Manager (MTLM) and then connect to the right server (with or without SSL), port, project collection, and project.

Well, we hope to make this easier. The most work involves going through the connection experience. The person has to know what server to connect to, which gets tricky if their server requires SSL or has a non-default virtual application directory. They also have to find the right project collection and then project.

We can simplify this by allowing you to share all this information in a clickable URI. Imagine your new co-worker gets a new email from you, or perhaps visits the team wiki, that has a link to MTLM setup, and then a link to connect!

For now these links need to be hand rolled, but we’re investigating how to more easily create one directly from MTLM. Here is an example URI and a breakdown of it.

example:

mtlm://windfall/tfs/DefaultCollection/p:Camano

break down:

mtlm[s]://<server>[:port]/<virtual app dir>/<collection>/p:<project>

Note: The text in square brackets is optional. You don’t have to specify a port if your server uses the default (8080), and you only need mtlms if your server requires SSL.

We have more planned for release (as in, not in Beta2) to make this even richer.